Coopetition Strategy and Innovation Outcomes in the Nigerian Mobile Payment Ecosystem

This dissertation investigates coopetition strategy, defined as the simultaneous pursuit of cooperation and competition, and its effects on innovation outcomes within Nigeria's rapidly evolving mobile payment ecosystem. The mobile payment sector in Nigeria presents a theoretically rich coopetition context where telecommunications firms, banks, fintech startups, and payment processors simultaneously collaborate on infrastructure and compete for customer wallets. Coopetition theory, game theory, and innovation systems theory provide the theoretical framework. The research employs a qualitative design using an interpretive multiple-case approach involving eight organizations within the Nigerian mobile payment ecosystem. Data were collected through forty-two in-depth interviews with strategy directors, partnership managers, and innovation leads. Longitudinal product and service launch records provided documentary evidence of innovation outcomes. Data were analyzed using template analysis guided by coopetition theory constructs. Findings reveal that innovation outcomes are maximized when coopetition arrangements are governed by explicit value creation and value appropriation boundary agreements. The study identifies tension management capability as a novel organizational competency that enables firms to sustain productive coopetition relationships without compromising competitive positioning. Infrastructure-layer cooperation combined with service-layer competition emerges as the dominant and most innovation-productive coopetition model in the Nigerian ecosystem. The dissertation extends coopetition theory by introducing the tension management capability construct and ecosystem-level coopetition governance frameworks. Keywords: coopetition strategy, innovation outcomes, mobile payment, Nigeria, tension management.